TopFoto Blog

50 years ago the Soviet Union made history. The launch of Sputnik 1 – just 98 minutes orbit by a satellite the size of a basketball – was a massive story which caught the world unawares. It triggered the formation of NASA and the Cold War space race and was the first in a line of extraordinary Russian firsts that that included the first “earthling” in space (the dog Laika), the first man in space (Yuri Gagarin) and the first space walk (Alexei Leonov). The genius behind it all was the shadowy figure of Sergei Korolev (“King” in Russian) who survived 8 years in Siberian gulag as a victim of Stalin’s Great Purge before taking on leadership of the Soviet space programme.

TopFoto has the Sputnik launch shot plus a gallery of images.
For a different perspective why not try Space According to PUNCH

October 4 1957 – Sputnik 1
November 3 1957 – Sputnik 2 (Laika)
December 6 1957 – US first attempt explodes (Vanguard TV3)
October 1 1958 – formation of NASA
April 12 1961 – first human in space
March 18 1965 – first space walk

p000376 - Cover of Punch, 6 November 1957 ©Punch Ltd / TopFoto
1040812 - The launch of Sputnik 1, 4 October 1957    ©RIA Novosti / TopFoto
1054197 - Sputnik 1, the first man-made satellite ©RIA Novosti / TopFoto

1908 was a BIG year. A meteor exploded in Siberia (luckily), felling 80 million trees… or was it a UFO? Transport took off with the Wright brothers and Henry Ford. Women’s fashion was tailored and elegant, with big hats. The Last Emperor of China began his reign. Stalin was arrested and Lenin arrived in St Petersburg in a sealed train. Turkey got a constitution. Six cars entered the great New York to Paris race. The Austro-Hungarian Empire annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ian Fleming was born and so was the FBI. London hosted the 1908 Olympics. The first major suffragette demonstration drew unprecedented crowds to Hyde Park.
And a very good year for Winston Churchill, who not only got promoted to Cabinet (President of the Board of Trade) but also got married to Miss Clementine Hozier.

1908 Selected Gallery

RV1082-2 - Henri Farman the first aviator to fly 1km in Europe ©Roger-Viollet / TopFoto
wha001574 - Pu-Yi (Hsuan T’ung). Last Emperor of China 1908-1912 ©World History Archive / TopFoto
0483479 - Dorando of Italy, first in the Marathon is disqualified at the London Olympics ©Topham / TopFoto

The Panama Canal, one of the greatest engineering feats of all time, is being expanded to cope with the massive demand and increasing size of ships. On one occasion a US ship, despite painstaking measurements in advance, expanded in the heat and stuck fast – and when you look at TopFoto’s superb gallery on the Canal you can see why.

Greenpeace boats, nuclear waste transporters, pleasure cruises, private yachts and aircraft carriers… the Panama Canal sees them all.

2007: 30 years since the Panama Canal Treaty (7 September 1977)
2007: 100 years since George Washington Goethals appointed Chief Engineer of the Panama Canal
2008: 80 years since Richard Halliburton swam the Panama Canal
2009: 10 years since Panama took over the Canal
2014: 100 years since the opening of the Panama Canal

Pictures of The Panama Canal - The Panama Canal by Jon Mitchell

Then and Now
RV10333-4 - With room to spare in the 1930s ©Roger-Viollet / TopFoto
0483479 - A tight squeeze for a modern tanker ©Colin Jones / TopFoto

In 1968, the Caravan Sites Act, proposed by Liberal Democrat MP Eric Lubbock, forced local authorities in the UK to provide sites for Gypsies and Travellers. That statutory duty was overturned in 1994 by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act.

Ahead of next year’s 40 anniversary, TopFoto takes a look at Gypsy life in England before the 1968 laws came into effect – plus a few wider images of Gypsies, from Austria to Iraq.

Go straight to pictures

0984244 - Gypsies on the Epsom Downs for the Derby 3 June 1919
©Topham / TopFoto

Later this year, deep space probe Voyager 2, still sending back information 30 years after launch, will go through the heliosheath (where the sun’s influence ends and inter-stellar space begins). And TopFoto is right there with it. In 1977 we provided this Olympic games picture for the famous Golden Records, details of life on earth in case an alien species picks up this cosmic message in a bottle. TopFoto’s image has reached 7.8 billion miles from Earth (12.6 billion km) and is going strong.

Go straight to pictures

0062739 - TopFoto’s Olympic sprinters were carefully chosen to show different races of human beings, the Olympics having been identified as the perfect place to find such a scene. It was also chosen to reveal the musculature of the leg and give a clue that we are not just runners but also spectators, and that there is competition. ©Picturepoint / TopFoto